Glossary

Representational state transfer (REST) is a style of software architecture for distributed hypermedia systems such as the World Wide Web.

Service Component Architecture (SCA) is a relatively new initiative advocated by major software vendors. Its proponents claim it is more natively suited for the delivery of applications that conform with the principles of service-oriented architecture. As such, SCA components are supposedly more technologically agnostic.

The Web Application Description Language (WADL) is an XML-based file format that provides a machine-readable description of HTTP-based web applications. These applications are typically REST web services.